Why isn't the Holodomor taught in schools? (opens in new tab)

We learned about Irish Famine and Chinese Famine in school but not Holodomor or Bengal Famine. Holodomor is a special kind of famine that was politically and ethnically motivated. Ostensibly Ukrainian Don and Kuban Cossak territories to the south east were greatly affected. This needs to be seen in the context of Decossackization and Dekulakization.

> Some famines are caused by misguided collectivization / socialism enforced by the state

This looks deliberate, not misguided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes

regions with higher Ukrainian population shares were struck harder with centrally planned policies corresponding to famine, and Ukrainian populated areas were given lower amounts of tractors which were correlated to a reduction in famine mortality, ultimately concluding that 92% of famine deaths in Ukraine alone along with 77% of famine deaths in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus combined can be explained by systematic bias against Ukrainians

[..]

Under the collectivism policy, for example, farmers were not only deprived of their properties but a large swath of these were also exiled in Siberia with no means of survival. Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were ordered to be shot.

> If you’re going to teach things, you need to find patterns and try to discern the root causes. Otherwise you’re just imparting biased propaganda to students.

This implies that history currently is taught so as to find patterns and causes, and that teaching the Holodomor for some reason wouldn't entail patterns and causes. It is a fully general answer that could excuse any event from being taught. A non-answer.

And to answer your question, yes, I knew about all of them.

The Irish Potato Famine was not due to protection of capitalism. Perhaps the single biggest contributor to it was the anti-capitalist Corn Laws:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws

Fellow Croatian here, Holodomor was actually briefly mentioned in my high school history class 2 years ago.

History is full of any kind of event that may be taught, so that is a fully general answer: it can explain why anything isn't taught, and applies equally to things that are taught.

And the part of Andrew Tanner's Quora answer (top answer at submission time) that says it's because "it had relatively little impact on other historical events" is tautological - it would have had more impact if it was taught and publicized more.

So neither is a satisfying explanation.

Very true. After all it was Upton Sinclair who said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."